World’s Top 10 Fastest Supercomputers of 2011

TOP500 released the latest list of top ten most powerful, high-performance computers in the world at the 26th International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg, Germany, on Monday.

According to TOP500 project that ranks most powerful known computer systems in the world, the positioning of all systems is based on how fast they run Linpack, a benchmark application developed to solve a dense system of linear equations. All ten have Linux operating system.

For the first time, all of the top 10 systems achieved petaflop/s performance, and those are also the only petaflop/s systems on the list, TOP500 said in a statement.

The U.S. is tops in petaflop/s with five systems performing at that level; Japan and China have two each, and France has one, it added.

Below is the list with details about the top 10 supercomputers of 2011:

1. K Computer, Japan

Built by Fujitsu, the Japanese supercomputer at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) in Kobe, is capable of performing more than 8 quadrillion calculations per second (petaflop/s). “The K Computer is also more powerful than the next five systems on the list combined and also one of the most energy-efficient systems on the list.”

K Computer, Japan. PHOTO: Top500

2. Tianhe-1A, China

The Chinese supercomputer at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, China, performs at 2.6 petaflop/s.

3. Jaguar, United States

The Jaguar, a Cray supercomputer at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is ranked No. 3 with 1.75 petaflop/s.

4. Nebulae, China

The Nebulae supercomputer at China’s National Supercomputing Center in Shenzen is ranked fouth with 1.27 petaflop/s performance.

5. Tsubame 2.0, Japan

Tsubame 2.0 at the Tokyo Institute of Technology is fifth most fast supercomputer in the world with 1.19 petaflop/s performance.

6. Cielo, United States

The Cielo supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico performs at 1.11 petaflop/s.

7. Pleiades, United States

Pleiades, located at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, allows over 1,000 active users around the country advance knowledge about the Earth, solar system and the universe. Pleiades helps meet computing needs of NASA's aeronautics projects and other space operations. It has a performance at 1.09 petaflop/s.

Pleiades Westmere-based racks: The addition of the Westmere and Nehalem nodes increased the computing capacity available on Pleiades by 170%. PHOTO: NASA

8. Hopper, United States

The Hopper supercomputer, located at DOE’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) in California, is ranked eighth with 1.054 petaflop/s performances.